Review

One of Studio Ghibli’s strangest productions has to be this, Whisper of the Heart. Not because of any crazy morphing creatures — though the film has a few of those — but because of its subject matter. Here’s a movie about teen romance, set largely in a library. There are no rakish adventurers, no ghosts, no forest creatures. Just a boy and a girl and only one magical cat to speak of. The film is generally charming, though its love story is strange to the point of inaccesibility: A girl who writes alternate lyrics to ‘Take Me Home, Country Roads’? Whoa, now that’s weird.